Episode 6 Live at the Apollo

'Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome

'your host for tonight, Danny Bhoy!'

AUDIENCE CHEER

Hello, welcome to Live At The Apollo.

This is a big room for comedy.

The room is very important in comedy.

I did a show about six months ago in a tent,

not like a tent with the zip and the...

LAUGHTER

That would be a bit weird.

"Hi, just the two of ya. Aye, come in.

"Sit down. Turn off your phones. Right, here we go."

No, I mean like a marquee, that was it.

And the audience was 360 degrees around me.

Which is quite, ya know, difficult

because you feel quite paranoid. Well, not paranoid.

That would be a bad personality trait for a comedian, wouldn't it?

"What are you laughing at?!"

Awkward is the word I was looking for.

So I did the whole thing. I did the whole show.

And the next morning, I checked the newspapers for reviews.

And I found a review that opened...opened with the line,

"Danny Bhoy moved around the stage like a kebab on a spit."

LAUGHTER

That's a bit racist, isn't it?

My favourite food is canapes. I love canapes.

Canape is the French word for...hors d'oeuvres.

LAUGHTER

I love canapes.

But the problem with canapes is you only get them at parties, right?

And they're almost counter-productive

to the party atmosphere,

cos the whole idea of a party is

you're supposed to be mingling and meeting people,

but you can't concentrate if there are canapes in the room.

LAUGHTER

Those silver trays of treats being taken around. Oh, I... Oh!

I mean, you're in a conversation because you have to be.

"Oh, yes, that's interesting. Oh, he's five now, is he?

"That's fascinating(!)

LAUGHTER

"Oh, they're new. They're new.

"Eh? Sorry?"

Because you've always got to keep one eye on the canapes, haven't you?

Because you don't want to miss your turn.

That's a horrible feeling, when you're talking to some

prick about schools...

"Yeah, yeah, public or private? That's the thing, isn't it?

"Oh, for fuck's... Shut up!

"That's the mini beef Wellington! We've just...

"Just...cos you... Bloody shut up when the canapes arrive, you prick!

"They're the best ones, the mini beef Wellington.

"Just shut up when the canapes arrive.

"It's the only reason we're here. I don't give a shit which school

"your kid goes to. The mini beef Wellington's gone."

Because you can't chase a canape.

Can't do that undignified walk. You know, the...

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, he was talking. So I missed...

"Can I just get the...? Can I...can I just get the...?"

The other thing with canapes is, and you know this,

you've always got to act surprised when they come.

LAUGHTER

Don't you?

You have to do, "Oh! I didn't... Oh!"

Because that's the rules, you can't wait for canapes.

You can't just stand at a party like that, you can't.

"Yeah, good, good. On you go."

You've got to pretend to be in a conversation and,

"Yes, that's very interesting. Oh, she's 11 now? Well, that is...

"Oh! I didn't know. I didn't know there would be food,

"did you know there was going to be food?

"I had no idea, there's food. Look at that. That's great, isn't it?

"Food. Oh. What a lovely surprise.'

You're not surprised,

you've been tracking the bloody thing for 20 minutes.

You know every stop it's made, you know how many have been taken,

Making the mental calculations in your head.

"OK, we should be all right with the sausage rolls.

"They've just come out.

"I'm not sure about the vol-au-vents and the quiche.

"This guy's been really greedy. This guy. Stop him. Honestly.

"He better not eat too many of those quiche...

"We've obviously missed the mini beef Wellingtons cos you and your...

"We're all right with the ham and the cheese.

"Here we come now. So, anyway... Schoo...

"Oooh! I didn't know there was going to be food!"

LAUGHTER

A lot of things have changed in the last 20 years.

Some of the older people in the room will be able to identify with

what I'm about to tell you.

Getting your hair cut nowadays, very different to when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, well, I grew up in a small Scottish village,

there was only one hairdresser.

You'd go in on a Saturday morning and get your hair cut by a woman

with no formal training...

..just a pair of scissors and a dream.

And she would hack away at your head for an hour

and then give you some plasters and a lollipop.

And that was the way things were.

It's all changed now.

I went to a salon a couple of weeks ago and said,

"Can I get my hair cut?"

And she said, "Well, we can fit you in right now."

Well, I said, "That's fantastic."

She said, "Yeah, I just need you to fill out this form."

"Why? Why am I filling out a form?"

She said, "I need to book the appointment."

"Ah, but we booked it. I'm here! I turned up."

She said, "No, but I still need to create a profile."

"But you don't. That's the great thing about it,

"you don't need to know anything about me, you don't need to know my

"name, my address, has there been a history of hair in my family.

"You don't need to know.

"All you need to know is that this is too long.

"Snippy-snippy, cut-cut, this bit here.

"Snippy-snippy, cut-cut."

She said, "No, I still need you to fill out the form."

I said, "Give me the form."

Ten questions!

If you were to ask me to devise a questionnaire for someone about to

get their hair cut, I would struggle after two questions.

Number one - Do you have hair?

Number two - Do you need it cut?

Snippy-snippy, cut-cut.

Ten questions.

Question number one - How did you hear about our salon?

Everyone wants to know how you heard about them nowadays.

It's not enough that you're there, they want to know your source.

The worst one is East Coast Trains.

MAN LAUGHS

Yeah, on their online booking form, it always makes me laugh.

"How did you hear about our train service?"

"What do you mean, how did I hear about...?

"The Industrial Revolution!"

I seem to vaguely remember there's a train that goes from Edinburgh to

London, has that changed?

Do you think this is a revelation to me?

Do you think I'm flicking through a newspaper? Just idly looking.

Oh! What the Dickens is this?

A train?!

That goes from Edinburgh to London?!

What witchcraft do you speak of?!

Prepare my horse!

To Waverly we must go, to debunk this myth!

"How did you hear about our trains?" And it's options!

These are your options of how you heard about us - the internet...

..a friend. Who's ticking that box?

A friend! Did a friend tell you about the train? Was it a friend?

Was it a friend? Was it? Was it one of your friends? Was it?

Is it a friend who told you about the choo-choo? The train?

Who's ticking that? I don't even know how that conversation would go!

You're at a party, you know...

"Danny, come here.

"Just come here.

"Walk with me, Danny.

"Danny, we've been friends a while now.

"There's not a lot I don't tell you.

"Obviously, some things I've been holding back.

"It seems now's the right time, a good a time as any,

"and I know I should've told you this earlier but, um..

"Danny, there's a train."

"A what?!"

""You heard. A metal horse, if you will.

"I know I should've told you earlier, I simply know it..

"Oh! I didn't know there was going to be food!

"Did you know there was going to be food?"

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I don't know.

I just don't like any of that,

any of that trying to gather information from you all the time.

E-mail is the worst! I bought pants the other day, pants!

I got to the check-out and she said, "Is it just the pants?"

And I said, "Yeah." She said, "What's your e-mail?"

I said, "No, just the pants."

"Yeah, what's your e-mail?"

I said, "I'm buying pants!

"What part of this transaction suggests to you that I think

"we should stay in touch?!"

Otherwise, I would've asked in the shop, wouldn't I?!

"Excuse me, sir, these pants, do they come with any kind of ongoing

"internet support, maybe some sort of lasting e-mail friendship?"

I don't like all that.

When you get to the check-out that's it,

that should be the end of it.

It's just like I bought a toaster the other day. £14.99.

And I splashed out.

When I got there she said,

"Do you want to take out an extended warranty on this?"

"Why?" She said, "Well, it's only covered for a year.

"And then you're on your own."

"Oh, I'll take my chances, thanks very much."

I live life on the edge.

And then she said, "Well, it just gives you that extra piece of mind."

LAUGHTER

I think you have a very misconstrued idea of what I worry about.

Do you think I'm waking up, a year from now,

in the middle of the night, sweating...

"That toaster could go at any moment!

"You can't live your life like this, Danny.

"You're a fool to yourself. Take out the warranty, man!"

AUDIENCE CHEER

"And that blender's only got another week."

Anyway, look, let's just get back to the...

I'm in the hairdresser, right?

Final question - What do you want to achieve with your hair today?

It's a tough, tough question that.

So many things!

But after much thought, I thought,

"You've got to be responsible, Danny."

So I wrote, "An end to the escalating tension

"and violence in the Middle-East."

Snippy-snippy, cut-cut.

Thanks, you have an exceptional show ahead of you, Apollo.

This is really a brilliant bill, are you ready for your first act?

AUDIENCE CHEER

He's one of my personal favourites, I know you're

going to love him, go absolutely wild and crazy for Mr Miles Jupp!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello!

Oh, Hammersmith, how very delightful.

Um, you probably all recognise me as the waiter who had all of his lines

cut from the first Sherlock Holmes film.

And then didn't find out until the premiere.

Nonetheless, it was a portrayal that has since revolutionised the way

everyone acts in period detective fiction

when they've got nothing to say.

Now, um, I've arrived here tonight, as I suspect you have,

as I arrive everywhere I arrive in London - furious.

I mean, you can all see how angry I am. A very angry man.

Whenever I'm trying to get anywhere in London, I get angry.

Whenever I get a bus that's late or a Tube that seems to stop

without any explanation, or just a traffic jam,

I always get angry. And I always just blame the same person.

I don't even know if it's fair, but I always blame Boris.

Anything that goes wrong when I'm out and about in London,

I blame Boris.

I blame him for road works, even if you hear somebody's under a train,

I just assume Boris was cycling carelessly past a Tube station.

Hit somebody over the barriers, down the escalators, onto the track.

I will...

LAUGHTER

I will happily blame that man for anything. I mean, I just...

Honestly, I just don't understand what he does.

What does Boris actually do?

He always looks absolutely shattered.

Always looks as if he's just come round from a general anaesthetic.

Do you ever find yourself looking at a picture of Boris and thinking,

something's not quite right, something's missing.

What's wrong about this picture?

Oh, yeah. I'll tell you what it is.

It's the fact that he's not wearing pyjamas.

LAUGHTER

And let me just say this to you, Hammersmith, I have four children.

Four children. The oldest of whom is four.

By all means do the maths, I've done it myself, on...

..four occasions. I have four children.

I didn't say four so you could congratulate me

or commiserate with me.

I don't say it because I've gone mad

and have forgotten what all the other numbers are.

How many sugars do you want with your tea? Four.

How many legs should a pair of trousers have? Four!

How are you? Four!

I say it merely, merely so you can understand just where

it is that I'm coming from when I stagger out here,

onto this stage tonight.

I'm not really in the position to do groovy, young, material about me

and my Canadian flatmate snorting cocaine

together off of the back of a shared prostitute.

I do not live in a flat.

And...nor do I consort with Canadians.

LAUGHTER

I've got absolutely nothing against them in principle,

they have as much right to be here as anybody,

and, err, whatever it is they do, they seem to do it quietly.

I'm cut off. I really am cut off.

I mean, the lives...the lives that other people lead.

Look at yourselves for instance, you're having an evening out.

Admittedly, it's in Hammersmith, but nonetheless, it's an evening out.

That is absolutely unthinkable to my wife and I.

You know the way in magazines they Photoshop people so they look perfect

and you end up feeling envious

of what is a completely unrealistic ideal.

That is how I feel about pretty much anything

I see or hear about other people's lives.

"You did what? You nipped out for milk?!

"What, on your own?!

"Aren't you Bear Grylls!"

Just listening to what my childless, unmarried friends get up to

makes me feel like an Iranian housewife

reading the biography of Paris Hilton.

If just one of the people that lives in your house is a baby,

you instantly just lose all sense immediately of what is and is not

appropriate behaviour.

I remember when my oldest child was only three days old,

bumping into my bleary-eyed wife on the landing and she said,

"I've just had a bowl on cornflakes on the lavatory."

Just from nowhere.

Within a matter of days we'd been reduced to the state of,

if not animals, then undergraduates.

It doesn't matter how you've lived your life up

until that point, how tidy you've tried to be, how sophisticated.

Suddenly, you've got one of those in the house, that's it! It's all gone!

The place, it's just suddenly awash with mystery fluid.

So much faecal matter suddenly dotted and strewn about where you live.

I mean, you become completely numb to the stuff,

just horrifyingly blase.

You can stand there looking at something that's been done on your

own bed and think, "Well we don't need to change the sheets for that!

LAUGHTER

"It's only a small turd, isn't it?

"It's hardly worth wasting a flush, is it?

"Pop it in the wastepaper basket, stick a crisp packet over it."

Anybody whose friends have had children,

they look at them sometimes and go,

"God, they've really changed, haven't they?

"They've really mellowed."

They haven't mellowed, they are broken!

"Oh he's really calmed down, hasn't he? He used to be so ambitious.

"He's much calmer now."

Of course he's not ambitious anymore,

there's simply no point in being ambitious anymore.

What is the point of dreaming about Hollywood

if you can't even bloody finish your muesli before lunch time?

It is not possible to finish your muesli before lunch time now

because the entire morning just consists of being interrupted.

When you have that many young children charging about the place

you get interrupted so often

that eventually the interruptions themselves start getting interrupted.

Desperately trying to clean all the milk off the floor after breakfast,

so all the food that hits it at lunch time doesn't splash.

Then someone opens up the freezer, gets a bag of peas out

and starts spilling them all over the floor.

And you're desperately trying to sweep them up.

Then someone ominously shouts, "I'm painting," from the hallway.

Run out there and find they've got hold of a loo brush

and are just rubbing it against the wall.

"It is a quarter to six in the morning!"

Well, ladies and gentlemen,

haven't I got myself worked up into yet another state.

LAUGHTER

I do wonder, in retrospect,

if I haven't underplayed the work that our nanny does. Um...

LAUGHTER

Well hey-ho!

Hammersmith, aren't you lovely? God bless, good night.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Miles Jupp, everyone!

CHEERING

OK, ladies and gentleman, and are ready for your final act?

CHEERING

He's actually brilliant.

Please welcome, the one and only, Mr Lee Nelson.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Good Evening, Apollo.

CHEERING

Yes!

Ah, people, I've had such a nice day today.

It was my little boy's sixth birthday.

Yeah!

We don't have a lot of money, so we, uh, didn't tell him.

LAUGHTER

It is hard being a parent, people.

Mums! Especially mums, my poor missus!

She's always looking in the mirror, "Oh, my gosh!

"My body ain't what like it was before the kids come along."

I say, "Babes, you're being so silly!

"You weren't all that before!"

As a dad, it changes the way you look at everything

to be honest with you, you know?

I mean, I started, like, thinking,

there's too much fighting going on in the world, you know.

Do you realise this country has been at war with Iraq, with Afghanistan,

even Argentina? Argentina, man! We're fighting them

over this crappy bit of land no-one really cares about.

Let's just give 'em back Scotland!

Have we got Scotty Land legends in the house?

Scotty Land legends. Give us a cheer.

CHEERING

I was well surprised by that referendum result.

I have never known Scottish women to say no.

Is you really a separate county?

Not really, innit.

All right, you have got your own currency, the err, the 'poond.'

All right, to be fair, there is some cultural differences, innit?

It is... All right, the weather.

It is a lot hotter in England than it is in Scotty Land.

Yeah, that's true!

A lot of Scottish people come down to England from Glasgow

or whatever and think they're going to fit in.

And actually they find it too hot here.

Yeah! I know! And then they end up sleeping outside!

LAUGHTER

I thinks Scottish people are just a little bit angry.

That is what was going on with the Scottish people.

They were angry because Scottish people used to be the top

foreign people in England, and then the Polish people came along.

And the Polish people work harder, they drink more

and they speak better English!

It's just north-south banter, innit?

Have we got people from the North of England tonight?

Give us a cheer.

CHEERING Loads!

Where are you from, sweetie pie?

-Manchester.

-Manchester.

We talk so different. I love that, innit!

Down south, how do we talk, innit, what do we say?

'Baath,' innit? 'Baath.'

That's how we talk! 'Baath.' I'm going to wash myself, in the 'baath.'

In Manchester, they say, "Sod it, let's just go for a drink!"

LAUGHTER

Have we got Scousers in the house tonight? Scousers?

CHEERING Loads of Scousers!

Now, Liverpool properly does have a different language.

Scouser people, tell everyone what boss means in Liverpool.

Where's a Scouser? What's that, please?

-All right.

-It's good, innit?

-Yes.

Yeah, that's amazing. In Liverpool, boss means good!

The rest of the country, boss means the fella at work,

but in Liverpool they just don't have no use for that normal meaning!

LAUGHTER

Man... I like...I like what's going on in this country.

I'm proud of this country. We've got the royal family, innit!

Yeah, we've got another royal baby coming!

I really hope this one's black.

LAUGHTER

I like the mix of the different people that we get in the UK.

I don't agree with UKIP.

UKIP say we've got too many foreigners in this country.

I done a bit of research of my own, and the fact is,

there's actually a lot more foreigners in other countries.

I agree with UKIP on the euro, I don't think we should get the euro.

I think that'd be bad for business.

I mean, Poundland's buggered.

I think we've got it pretty good in the UK, is what I think.

But people still love to complain, innit.

"Are you all right?" "Naaah."

"What's wrong?" "My phone battery died."

"Are you all right?"

"Naaah, I'm well stressed about what I'm going to wear."

"Are you all right?"

"Naah, I've got like irritable bowels."

Whaaat?!

Do you think people complain about them sort

of things in countries where they don't have anything that we does?

I mean, can you imagine the Children in Need appeal?

I mean, you've got scenes all across Africa,

you've got the cheesy charity music in the background,

you've got Dean Gaffney looking emotional down the camera,

got an African child next to him.

"Umbazee is just 12 years of age.

SENTIMENTAL MUSIC PLAYS

"Umbazee is just another victim here in Africa. Umbazee needs your help.

TEARFULLY: "Umbazee...

"..is gluten intolerant!

LAUGHTER

"If he attempts to eat rice or bread or certain types of muesli,

"he gets a slightly bloated feeling in his tummy!

"Please give generously.

"Two pounds will let Umbazee buy some gluten-free humus,

"Five pounds will allow him to have the time he needs to regularly

"tweet about his condition.

"£20 will mean Umbazee can make the life-changing visit

"he needs to Holland and Barrett."

AUDIENCE CHEERS

I've got to get going. I've got to get outta here.

Yeah, I'm proper knackered, man.

When you have a kid, kiss goodbye to sleep, that is for sure, people.

Last night, about 4.00 in the morning, I'm spark out in my bed,

I'm in there...

Little boy comes into the room.

"Daddy.

"Daddy.

"Daddy!"

"Yeah?"

"Can I come and sleep in your bed? I've wet my bed."

"Yeah, course you can, in you come.

"I warn you - I've had too much to drink and I've done the same myself."

LAUGHTER

People, I've been Lee Nelson, you've been a bunch of legends.

Thank you, and good night!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Mr Lee Nelson!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Ladies and gentlemen,

please give it up for the two acts you saw this evening.

You saw the wonderful Miles Jupp.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And the very brilliant Mr Lee Nelson.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

You've been a fantastic audience. Thanks so much for coming out.

I'll see you all again sometime. I've been Danny Bhoy. Good night!